Category Archives: Human Rights

Hospitality Staffing Solutions and the Dehumanization of Workers

I was thinking of writing a post about how dehumanizing it is to work for Hospitality Staffing Solutions, the “temporary agency” used by Hyatt Hotels in Boston, Indianapolis and other cities, where workers start at minimum wage with no benefits and have to clean up to 30 rooms a day.

I was thinking about writing a post about the safety orders recently issued to Hospitality Staffing Solutions and the Hyatt Regency Indianapolis by the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration following injury complaints lodged by Hyatt housekeepers. (The proposed fines to both companies total more than $50,000.)

I was thinking about writing a post about how Hospitality Staffing Solutions has faced wage complaint lawsuits in Massachusetts, Florida, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, including a 2009 class-action suit on behalf of more than 100 janitors and housekeepers at two Pittsburgh Hyatts.

I was thinking of driving home the point that these kind of labor subcontractors are increasingly enabling the hospitality industry to treat its workers as cheap and disposable commodities…

…but I think this recent ad for Hospitality Staffing Solutions will tell you everything you need to know…

(h/t Ross Hyman)

Gaza and the Arab Spring: A Conversation with Nadia Hijab

Osama Bin Laden: Was Justice Done?

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On nights like this one, we can say to those families who lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror: justice has been done (President Obama, May 1, 2011)

I can’t say that.

In Jewish tradition, there are two different terms for “justice.” The first is mishpat, which is generally understood to mean “retributive justice.” In other words, we apply mishpat when we settle our disputes by right rather than by might, through due process of law rather than by resorting to revenge or vigilantism. Jewish – as well as American – values teach that law must be held in the highest regard by any community that considers itself a free society.

By this standard, justice was certainly not done when bin Laden was summarily executed by extra-judicial assassination. Many American leaders have repeated that terrorists have declared war on American values. What does it mean, then, when we fight them by betraying the very values of justice that we purport to uphold?

Louise Richardson, whose book “What Terrorists Want” is the wisest book on terrorism I’ve ever read, hits right it on the head:

Had we captured bin Laden alive and then resisted the very human urge to exact revenge and instead handed him over to an international court of impeccable rectitude and reputation for trial on charges against humanity, we would have deprived him of glory and demonstrated, even to the skeptical, the vast difference between his values and ours (p. 198)

(Though I hold tight to this moral conviction, I have no illusions that trying bin Laden in an international court would have been anywhere near the realm of political possibility. Just last month, the White House gave up on its intention to try accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a New York civilian court. Attorney General Eric Holder now says Mohammed and four other 9/11 terror suspects will face a military trial at, you guessed it, Guantanamo Bay.)

The other word for justice is tzedek, or “distributive justice.” According to this definition, we promote justice whenever we strive to eradicate the inequities in our society, be they imbalances of wealth, power, or privilege.

By this measure, our execution of bin Laden represents the tragic failure of imagination that our government calls the “War on Terror.” We are sadly deluded if we believe we will end terror through the force of our military might. We will never fully eradicate terrorism – but we can certainly mitigate it by taking responsibility for the ways our nation may be contributing to the global injustices that create breeding grounds for terrorists around the world.

Now that we’ve killed bin Laden, are we ready to have a real national conversation about the hundreds of military bases our country maintains around the world, our ongoing wars in three Middle Eastern countries, and our unconditional military support for Israel’s occupation? For all of the billions of dollars we are pouring into our national military machine, might we be prepared to contemplate, as Richardson suggests, “the adoption of a comprehensive development agenda to address the underlying or permissive causes of terrorism?” (p. 221)

No, I do not believe justice, in any sense of the word has been achieved here. Visceral satisfaction, relief or grim pleasure, perhaps, but not justice.

An Open Letter to Our Rabbinical Colleagues

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This past week, rabbis across the country received a request from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism to sign a public rabbinic letter to Congress that urged our Representatives and Senators not to cut any foreign aid to Israel as part of the FY2012 budget. The request was co-signed by the rabbinical leaders of four major American Jewish denominations.

As rabbis who received these appeals for our endorsement, we would like to voice our respectful but strong disagreement to the letter. We take particular issue with the statement:

As Jews we are committed to the vision of the Prophets and Jewish sages who considered the pursuit of peace a religious obligation. Foreign Aid to Israel is an essential way that we can fulfill our obligation to “seek peace and pursue it”

We certainly agree that the pursuit of peace is our primary religious obligation. Our tradition emphasizes that we should not only seek peace but pursue it actively. However we cannot affirm that three billion dollars of annual and unconditional aid – mainly in the form of military aid – in any way fulfills the religious obligation of pursuing peace.

This aid provides Israel with military hardware that it uses to maintain its Occupation and to expand settlements on Palestinian land. It provides American bulldozers that demolish Palestinian homes. It provides tear gas that is regularly shot by the IDF at nonviolent Palestinian protesters. It also provided the Apache helicopters that dropped tons of bombs on civilian populations in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, as well as the white phosphorus that Israel dropped on Gazan civilians, causing grievous burns to their bodies – including the bodies of children.

In light of Israel’s past and continuing military actions, how can we possibly affirm that our continued unconditional aid fulfills the sacred obligation of pursuing peace?

We also take exception to this assertion:

U.S. foreign aid reaffirms our commitment to a democratic ally in the Middle East and gives Israel the military edge to maintain its security and the economic stability to pursue peace.

In fact our ally, the Netanyahu administration, has even rebuffed mild pressure from the US government to comply with the longstanding US position against new settlements in the West Bank. If we believe that any peaceful settlement requires the end of the Occupation and Israel’s settlement policy, how will massive and unconditional foreign aid – and the support of hundreds of rabbis for this aid – promote a negotiated peaceful settlement of the conflict?

An Israeli government that continues to settle occupied territory with impunity will not change its policy as long as it is guaranteed three billion dollars a year. With every other ally, our government pursues a time-honored diplomatic policy that uses “sticks” as well as “carrots.” We believe the cause of peace would be better served by conditioning support to Israel on its adherence to American and Jewish values of equality and justice.

We are also mindful that the Arab world itself feels under assault by the US when it witnesses Palestinians regularly assaulted with American-made weapons. With the vast and important changes currently underway in the Middle East, we are deeply troubled by the message that this policy sends to Arab citizens who themselves are struggling for freedom and justice.

We know that many of our colleagues who have signed this statement have taken courageous public stands condemning Israel’s human rights abuses in the past. We also know it is enormously challenging to publicly take exception to our country’s aid policy to Israel. Nonetheless, we respectfully urge our our colleagues to consider the deeper implications represented by their support of this letter.

Unconditional aid to Israel may ensure Israel’s continued military dominance, but will it truly fulfill our religious obligation to pursue peace?

In Shalom,

Rabbi Brant Rosen and Rabbi Brian Walt

On Palestinian Humanity and the Murder of Vik Arrigoni

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Required reading: Ashley Bates on Vittorio Arrigoni, the Italian journalist and human rights activist who was murdered by jihadist militants in Gaza yesterday:

I met Vittorio, known to his friends as Vik, during my first week of freelance reporting in Gaza last year for publications including The Nation, GlobalPost, and Jerusalem Post Magazine. Vik graciously offered to show me around. The first time we met, he recounted the Israeli army assaults that he’d witnessed, and advised me on humanitarian stories that I might cover in Gaza. He brought along his laptop, and offered to let me use his pictures and videos. He took deep puffs from his pipe as he told me about the things he’d seen, including the time he saw a friend of his killed in an Israeli airstrike. I remember feeling awed by his determination to perservere despite his grief…

He was among a handful of foreigners present in Gaza during Israel’s 2008 / 2009 invasion—he called it a “life-changing trauma.” During the invasion, Vik rode with ambulances to document civilian casualities; he took photographs of bomb wreckage, including many photos of dead children. Vik said that the ambulance workers, 22 of whom were ultimately killed during the war, were the most courageous people he’d ever met. I would say the same about Vik.

I have no doubt that the vicious kidnapping and murder of Vik Arrigoni will reinforce some peoples’ worst assumptions about the humanity of the Palestinian people. Last night, for instance, I received this message through my blog:

The recent assassinations of Pro-Peace activists and supporters of Palestinians by Palestinians is telling us something very loudly.

I’m not exactly sure what the commenter believed these tragedies are telling us, but I suspect this person meant something along the lines of: “See, this is the nature of the enemy Israel has to deal with. How will we possibly make peace with people who are insane enough to murder the very people who are actually working for their own liberation?”

No, I have no illusions about the knee-jerk generalizations that we’ll be hearing aired in the wake of this horrid event. For me, however, the effect has been precisely the opposite. Over the past day, my Twitter feed has been absolutely overwhelmed with expressions of grief from Gazans who are mourning the loss of someone they clearly consider to be one of their own:

Last night was like hell,so cold, so cruel, so unsafe, why couldnt we save him?we owed him that

Vik had the same flame we had,he was Palestinian,I cant help but wonder & question allot of stuff, may he RIP

I still cant believe it angered and saddened by kidnap of Vittorio Arrigoni. Gaza has been so safe from such acts in recent years

we lost a brother. he was one of us, he was more palestinian than many palestinians here.

Rest in Peace #Vittorio Arrigoni, we lost a Palestinian, not a friend to the Palestinians

Vik was murdered by the Salafists, an ultra-radical fringe group that is strongly opposed by Hamas and the overwhelming majority of Palestinians. We would be no more justified in judging Palestinian society by their actions than we would in judging Israelis by the actions of Yigal Amir or Yona Avrushmi (the individual who murdered Israeli peace activist Emil Grunzweig.)

Final word goes to Gazan blogger Omar Ghraieb:

Vittorio meant allot for Palestinians, Gazans and his friend everywhere. He is a huge loss for us all, may he rest in peace.

The LA Times on Lifta, Katamon and the Resilience of Memory

Belated Thoughts on the Goldstone Op-ed

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I usually try to stay current in my posts but alas, life invariably manages to intervene. Latest case in point: the now all-too-well-known Goldstone Washington Post, op-ed, which came out just as I was leaving to take my son on an extended college visit road trip. So even though this story is yesterday’s news by blogosphere standards, I’d like to weigh in with a few thoughts, belated though they may be:

Many are asking why Judge Richard Goldstone chose to “reconsider” his committee’s report nearly two years after it was presented to the UN Human Rights Council. In fact, Goldstone himself answers this question in the second paragraph of the op-ed: it was written in reaction to the recent release of a report by a UN commitee of experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report.

But of course for most, it’s not quite that straightforward. Many have speculated that the somewhat conciliatory tone of the op-ed indicates that Goldstone, a lifelong Zionist, may be trying to make amends with Israel and the Jewish community. Indeed, the blogosphere has been positively rife with theories that explain the psychological rationale for Goldstone’s public “reconsideration.”

While interesting, this kind of speculation is ultimately fairly moot. Richard Goldstone himself has never been the issue here. What truly matters are the serious allegations his committee made regarding the events that took place during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. And now: whether or not the new McGowan Davis Report has caused Goldstone to fundamentally recant these allegations.

In his op-ed, Goldstone found it significant that the McGowan Davis Report reported “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza.” In particular, Goldstone felt this shed some light on the issue of “intentionality” – which many found to be the most damning finding of the Goldstone Report.

As Goldstone wrote in his op-ed:

While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the (McGowan Davis) report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

Goldstone went on to say that if Israel had cooperated with his commission during its initial investigation, he would have been able to clarify further the critical issue of whether the IDF intentionally targeted civilians or whether these were isolated incidents perpetrated by individual soldiers.

While this may well be true, the issue of intentionality is by no means resolved. In fact, the McGowan Davis Report makes it clear that it cannot determine whether or not civilians were intentionally targeted as a matter of policy until Israel carries out a properly independent and transparent (i.e., non-military) investigation.

From p. 12 of the McGowan Davis Report:

Therefore, the Committee remains of the view that an independent public commission – and not the (Israeli Military Advocate General’s) office – is the appropriate mechanism for carrying out an independent and impartial analysis, as called for in (the Goldstone Report), into allegations that high-level decision-making related to the Gaza conflict violated international law.

At any rate, the issue of intentionality is but one of the many disturbing allegations brought to light by the Goldstone Report. In a Washington Post op-ed yesterday, Jessica Montell, Director of B’tselem, correctly pointed out that even if Israel did not intentionally target civilians, there are any number of troubling allegations regarding the IDF’s behavior during Operation Cast Lead:

In the operation, according to rigorous research by B’Tselem, Israel killed at least 758 Palestinian civilians who did not take part in the hostilities; 318 of them were minors. More than 5,300 Palestinians were injured, over 350 of them seriously. More than 3,500 houses were destroyed, and electricity, water and sewage infrastructure was severely damaged. In many ways, the Gaza Strip has yet to recover from the unprecedented destruction this operation wrought.

The extent of the harm to civilians does not prove that Israel violated the law. But Israel has yet to adequately address many allegations regarding its conduct, including: the levels of force authorized; the use of white phosphorous and inherently inaccurate mortar shells in densely populated areas; the determination that government office buildings were legitimate military targets; the obstruction of and harm to ambulances.

In his only interview since his op-ed, Goldstone has stated he has “no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this time.” Two other members of his original commission, Hina Jilani and Desmond Travers have both stated that they fully stand behind their findings as well.

However you choose to characterize Goldstone’s recent words, it is clear that he has not in any way recanted his commission’s report. Indeed, the fury with which Israeli politicians first received the Goldstone Report – and their vociferous insistence that it now be formally withdrawn – is the surest sign of its continuing moral power – and of the continuing need for Israel to conduct an independent, credible and transparent investigation of its actions during Cast Lead.

This was, after all, the most important recommendation of the Goldstone Report – and why, in my opinion, it still remains as relevant as ever.

End Violence – Free Bassem Tamimi!

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What is the best response to the recent tragedies in Israel/Palestine? According to Jewish Voice For Peace’s courageous new statement “From Gaza to Jerusalem: Statement” we must redouble our support of the growing movement of Palestinians who are seeking justice through nonviolent means:

This is a movement that respects life, that is part and parcel of the nonviolent democratic people’s movements we have been inspired by throughout the Arab world, that welcomes the solidarity and support of Israeli and international believers in equality and universal human rights. This is a movement that fundamentally subverts the logic of armies, revenge and armed struggle.

And it’s a movement that needs our support more than ever. It’s just been reported that Bassem Tamimi, one of the leaders of the nonviolent Popular Struggle Committee in the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh, was arrested today in his home by the IDF. According to reports, Bassem’s wife and 10 year old daughter were brutalized by soldiers during his arrest; he is expected to be indicted on charges of “incitement” and “organizing illegal demonstrations.”

I had the honor of meeting Bassem in Ramallah this past December (that’s him above center, with Iyad Morrar, leader of the Popular Committee in the village of Budrus). As I commented at the time, Palestinian leaders such as Bassem and Iyad are eminently deserving of our attention and support – especially since their struggles are largely ignored by the mainstream media.

As the JVP statement states, “(any) act of violence, especially one against civilians, marks a profound failure of human imagination and causes a deep and abiding trauma for all involved.”

Amen. I can think of no better antidote to the tragedy of violence than to champion the cause of Palestinian leaders such as Bassem Tamimi.

Hanukkah in March: Light a Candle for Gaza

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Last December, on the third anniversary of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, Rabbi Alissa Wise and I submitted an article to the Washington Post in which we asked the public to mark this occasion by lighting a Hanukkah candle for Gaza. The piece was edited further and we were told that it would run in WaPo’s online “On Faith” section.

At the eleventh hour, one day before our piece was to run, we were asked to make some more substantive edits in ways that would have significantly altered the message of the article. Unlike the earlier changes, these weren’t editorial tweaks – they were all too familiar pro-Cast Lead talking points.

Alissa and I rejected the last minute demands, and offered even more links to substantiate our claims. In the meantime, Hanukkah came and went and ultimately the piece never ran.

Fast forward to last week: blogger Phil Weiss had learned about the whole sad story and wrote a short post about it on Mondoweiss. After reading it, I got in touch with him and gave him the full background. M’weiss posted the complete story today, complete with the text of WaPo’s censored version.

So click below to read the article that never saw the light of day. Not seasonally appropriate any more, but still sadly relevant.

Continue reading →

Report from Beit Ommar

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14 year-old Mohammed Awad arrested by an Israeli soldier in Beit Ommar, 11/20/2010. Picture: Anne Paq/ActiveStills

As promised, here is a report from my good friend Father Cotton Fite, who is currently visiting Israel/Palestine. In this post, he personally testifies to the issue of child arrests/detentions in the West Bank village of Beit Ommar: